


red gold

by BlackSclera



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Ghoul!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 21:54:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15672051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackSclera/pseuds/BlackSclera
Summary: Iemitsu was a fool, but he was a fool that carried the blood of a legacy.





	red gold

 

*

 

 

Tsuna first feels _hunger_ when he is four-years-old.

 

His mother hadn't been home then, and he remembers feeling the hot pinprick of a hundred burning needles clawing through his throat, aching to be soothed, a painful thirst that sought to be quenched, and he could do nothing but heave the water and food he's forcefully trying to swallow to make it all stop. He's crying, he thinks, mind adrift in a space that numbed what he was feeling, but his body felt it all, acted on whatever it was that craved to be scratched at the back of his throat. He didn't understand what the pain meant then - still doesn't understand several years later but he knows better now, doesn't he? - and he is barely breathing by the time his mother comes back home with a bulky black bag which she bodily drags inside the living room with worried yet unsurprised eyes.

 

He watches her, teary-eyed, watches the quick and efficient rip of plastic, watches the drop of a heavy arm on wooden floors, watches the thin trickle of red and the shock of white peeking through brown.

 

"You must be hungry," Nana says to him in that kind, affectionate tone of hers, her smile fond as she wraps her hand around the thick wrist. She tugs, the arm tearing from the strength of her pull, and she presses the wrist against his lips. "Go ahead, Tsu-kun," she urges, kindly combing his hair back with her other hand and giving him a gentle nudge. "Eat. You'll feel better, I promise."

 

He isn't thinking anymore, the movements of his arms and his head and his mouth all driven by an instinct that lurked at the corners of his young mind. His mouth opens reflexively, fanged teeth gleaming with drool, and he  _bites_.

 

His teeth sink and sink and sink-

 

Nana looks at him with pride in her eyes.

 

 

*

 

 

The hunger doesn't go away.

 

It doesn't ease in the slightest even after three meals the next day, and he starts panicking, wide eyes wet with unshed tears because he is four but he knows what this means, to an extent, he knows his food is human and knows they had to be alive before they were killed. They were killing people and it's bad, the police might come and ask and take his mother away and Tsuna doesn't  _want_ that. He'd rather starve than have his mother taken away.

 

He tells his mother as such and she laughs daintily behind slender fingers. He's seen those very same fingers tear a man's arm from the socket and crush their trachea barehanded.

 

(She doesn't wear a wedding ring, he realizes later when he's seven-years-old.)

 

"It's alright, Tsu-kun," she reassures him. "It's just for a few weeks. It'll calm down after a while."

 

He nods with uncertainty. "...Mama?" he calls.

 

She hums in question.

 

"Do… they- who are they?"

 

Her eyes darken, something shuttering over her far too bright eyes - like  _his_ , he thinks, and similarities don't just run bone-deep - and taking away the light to drown in vivid black. Blood red, like the veins that crawl on the sides of her eyes, rips through him.

 

"They are prey," she answers and her voice is cold. Unforgiving. "Harada Eiichiro murdered his mother and his wife. Haruno Nissho raped his second wife's son and daughter. Fukuhara Kenji drugged his five-year-old daughter and brought her in a bar to be raped by other men. They are  _prey,_  Tsunayoshi, and they must be devoured."

 

_Prey,_  he repeats, lips mouthing the word over and over. The back of his eyes tighten and he stares at his mother, his left eye gold and the other a matching red.

 

It's odd, Nana finds herself thinking at times, because female ghouls are told to be incapable of conceiving children with a human father. She has heard the stories of mutilated and cannibalized infants because of their inability to survive and cope after birth, has feared that Tsuna would suffer through the same fate once upon a time until the moment Tsuna opened his eyes and breathed, her blood and something else, something just as  _potent_ , singing under his skin.

 

Iemitsu was a fool, but he was a fool that carried the blood of a legacy.

 

"Do you understand, dear?" Nana asks. "We do not feed on innocent people. We feed on dirt. We feed on rotting corpses. We feed on people that would not be remembered, on people that have already been forgotten."

 

Sometimes, she sees black and red. Sometimes, she sees gold.

 

Tsuna smiles.

 

"Yes, Mama."

 

And Nana- Nana sees  _fire_.

 

 

*

 

 

There is a yellow bird.

 

It's small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, small enough to be mistaken for a ball of yarn or a pile of yellow feathers, but he smells before he sees the blood and his stomach lurches.

 

_Hunger._

 

He stares, wide-eyed, at the bird that was weakly breathing through its tiny beak, the imperceptible rise of its chest tearing at Tsuna's heart.

 

This isn't food _._ This isn't  _prey_. 

 

This bird has done nothing wrong. But it's dying, it's  _dying-_

 

His blood visibly boils under his skin, aching to pierce, aching to dig through meat and flesh, to cut into skin like one would cut through steak, and he doesn't want to, he  _doesn't want to eat_ , and in his desperation, he bites through his left arm.

 

_It isn't enough. It isn't enough, still hungry, just eat it, it's dead anyway-_

 

Tsuna shakes his head, desperately fighting against his body's urge to squeeze the tiny animal inside his hand, to watch its insides explode and drip down his fingers so he can slurp and chew and-

 

" _No,_ " he vehemently spits. "No, it did nothing wrong. It did  _nothing_  wrong. Mama taught me better than this."

 

And she did. She will be disappointed in him if she feeds on one that did no wrong, one that isn't  _prey_.

 

Tsuna fights against his instincts, fights against the hunger in his core. His skin tears at the blatant resistance, the rush of thick, dark blood deafening in his ears. His body is destroying itself to break him, his  _will_ , he knows that, his mother told him so, but he will not harm. He will not lay his hand on anything that did nothing wrong.

 

"Tsu-kun…? What-"

 

He looks at her, defiance burning hot in his red and amber eyes. The veins around his eyes have violently ripped through the skin, running down the side of his face and his neck, throbbing with a scorching pain she knew well from when she was young and stubborn like her son, his entire body shuddering with the suppression of  _need_ -

 

"Please," he croaks, blood dripping down his nose and ears. He has bitten through his arm, his hand missing more fingers than it held, the muscles of his limb thrashing wildly. Someone as young as him shouldn't survive from cannibalizing himself but through sheer will, he holds, stands his ground, and says, "Please help him."

 

There, in his one unharmed hand, was a tiny, yellow bird.

 

Barely alive, she senses, but  _alive_  and tears well up at the corners of her eyes as she helps the little one heal.

 

("Tsu-kun?" she whispers later as they watch the little bird recover its strength, her voice wavering.

 

Tsuna, faint and weak and feverish from self-cannibalism, looks at her through one brown eye.

 

"I'm proud of you," she tells him sincerely. "I'm very, very proud of you."

 

He smiles warmly, and that's when Nana knows her son will not be like her mother who forcefully fed off of her when she doesn't do something right or like his clueless father who foolishly believed that Nana would never know of what she's keeping from her.

 

Iemitsu Sawada reeked of blood and he is her husband.

 

But above that, he is  _prey_  with the blood of a predator under his paper-thin skin.)

 

 

*

 

 

The one downside, Tsuna thinks when he's six-years-old, to his secret is that it's  _distracting._

 

It's difficult to empathize with something that he isn't but he watches, takes in the way his classmates react to fingers on their shoulders or a flat palm shoving against their chest, the way their heads turn to perceived sound, the way their body spoke in a language that Tsuna tried his best to understand. Their skin is soft, malleable to the touch, easily ripped apart by his teeth and his fingers, as small as they are, and children, he realizes early, have a distinct - nearly  _potent_  - smell to them that disturbed Tsuna to no end.

 

It's distracting, it's so distracting that he finds himself turning to follow scents rather than seeing with his eyes or listening with his ears. Some scents are stronger than others, more pungent, more delectable, and hunger hasn't been the same since he turned five - that's one thing off his shoulders - but that doesn't make him feel less inclined to turn his head and stare unseeingly at certain directions, his nose discerning the distance from the water, the kind of materials in his classmates clothes, the amount of fuel in a car. It comes to him in unfiltered sections, snapping through his thoughts like rubber against flesh.

 

They make fun of him for tripping on thin air for it, they laugh at his stupid, stupid answers because he isn't paying attention, too preoccupied with the scent of a rotting cat in the back of the school. They jab their fingers into his chest when he doesn't speak loud enough for them to hear and pull at his hair when he doesn't pay attention to them. They think they're  _hurting_  him and sometimes, Tsuna has to fight down a smile because  _if only they knew_.

 

(His smile is a lot like his mother's in that aspect. Knowing, calculating, cold.)

 

Tsuna lets them.

 

He lets them mock him, lets them call him names, because better that it's him who they hurt than another fragile human.

 

He isn't like them. In a way, it's both a blessing and a curse.

 

 

*

 

 

Mochida Kensuke is arrogant, immature, and incredibly pushy to the extent of bodily harming his classmates when they take away his toys.

 

Mochida Kensuke is the kid that everyone flocked to, the one that had more absences than attendance in his record, the one that everyone followed with doe-eyed admiration, the very same one who tried to stab through Tsuna's arm with a pencil when he corrects him in the middle of class.

 

Mochida Kensuke is six-years-old, and he carries the scent of blood.

 

It takes him by surprise that he couldn't help but blurt "Are you injured?" while Mochida is trying to shove his face into the floor.

 

Mochida flinches and looks at him with wide, terrified eyes, clearly not having expected the question.

 

Tsuna  _smells_ fear.

 

Something in him snaps and rears its head against his chest, surging and rising like white heat, like  _fire,_  and he suddenly understands the sudden absences, the near constant drive for perfection and the violent response to being corrected. He smiles, gently, kindly, and Mochida must see something else in his expression because he recoils and that fear is directed towards him instead.

 

The faint sound of chimes, of cracking ice, and he hears a voice that suspiciously sounded like his whisper into his ear, " _Prey."_

 

Mochida runs away before Tsuna can so much as speak.

 

 

*

 

 

"I'll be home late, Mama."

 

Nana doesn't so much as bat an eyelash, her smile merry as she tends to the yellow bird that has yet to fly with its injured wing.

 

Tsuna has been acting rather weirdly for the past few days, displaying vigilant and tenacious tendencies in the smallest of things. His walk more of a prowl when he enters the kitchen with a body bag in his grip (too often, she disdainfully observes, but Tsuna is a growing child and it's the inevitable call of their nature to appease their hunger), his grip on brittle wood tight enough to crush it into splinters. He isn't quite where his body is, the subtle tilt of his head and the downturn of his lips proof of a sound or a scent that she couldn't sense, the slow and deliberate tap of his finger rhythmic like he's hearing and inscribing the beat of someone's heart onto the table's surface.

 

It struck Nana as a behavior not unlike a shark catching tendrils of red within deep waters and she knew it was only a matter of time before he dove straight in with bared teeth.

 

"Be careful," she says, not that her son needed to be told. Tsuna has shown promising potential as a ghoul, the scope of his senses and the magnitude of his strength surpassing Nana's when she was eighteen-years-old. He's only six.

 

Tsuna nods regardless, his eyes gleaming red and amber under stark white porcelain ( _Wear a mask, dear,_ she suggests,  _you don't want them finding you_ ) as he opens the window and leaps out with enough force to dent the concrete and crack the glass.

 

Humming happily to herself, she lightly rubs her finger on the tiny bird's head and beams.

 

"Tsu-kun is growing up so fast, isn't he?" she asks the tiny animal, the smile on her face unhinged. "I'm not worried, though. I trust Tsu-kun. I know he will do good like he always does. Don't you think so too, little guy?"

 

The bird presses its head against her finger and chirps.

 

 

*

 

 

His feet are perched on the ledge of what appears to be a rundown apartment when he picks up on the scent of leather and liquor interweaving with the sharp tang of copper. He follows it, head tilting up and up until he 'sees' the heat of an occupied room. Two people, an adult and a child, and he doesn't have to remove his mask to know who they are.

 

"What the fuck is this?" a man spits, loud and venomous, the noisy clatter of plates and glass following the bellow of his voice. "You failed your test? You  _failed_  your test!? You useless piece of shit, you're just like your fucking mother! If you can't get a perfect score, what's the point? Hah? What's the  _point_? There's no fucking point in making you study in a school if you're not going to get perfect scores in your tests! Or is  _that_ it? Do you  _want_  to end up the same way she did? Do you want me to tie you up and let you bleed out like your dear  _mother_ did?"

 

"...N-no, Papa-"  _Kensuke_ , Tsuna thinks, and his entire body  _jerks_ when he hears the sound of skin against skin and Kensuke's pained scream.

 

" _Who gave you the permission to talk?"_

 

A deadly calm settles over him when he hears Kensuke's whimper.

 

It's a thin veil, cold and numbing and cutting, and everything quiets in his ears despite the rampaging  _need_ to devour and destroy boiling under his skin. His senses sharpen, narrowing down on the heat and the elevated thumping of heart against the  _prey's_  chest, focusing on nothing but the flow of red and the movement of muscle beneath skin as he jumps from where he's perched and breaks through the window.

 

The muted noise stops. There are words, he thinks, maybe even screaming, but it's all over by the time his mind snaps back into the same filtered clarity.

 

His arm is elbow deep through the man's chest, a splatter of red painting the walls and Kensuke's pale face.

 

Tsuna turns to face him, meat buried under his fingernails and blood dripping down his black clothes.

 

"You should run," he tells him, the sickening squelch of the man's insides loud in the abrupt silence.

 

Kensuke doesn't move. Doesn't breathe.

 

" _Kensuke-kun_ ," he urges. Not Mochida, he thinks, he deserves better than to be called his father's name. "Please. Please run away."  _You don't have to see this._

 

Kensuke doesn't run. Instead, he takes a shaky breath. He's favoring a hand to his chest, a swelling bruise on the side of his face, greenish blue and black bruises peeking from under the neck of his ragged t-shirt. There is distant recognition in his eyes.

 

"...I-" he starts, his voice so, so soft that he barely hears him even with his amplified senses, "I don't have..."

 

_I don't have anywhere to go._

 

The same voice calls him, the same sound of chimes and thick ice, the warm breath of a whisper carrying stifling heat.

 

_Home._ It sings.  _Bring him home._

 

He turns to the man in front of him and rips his arm away, unrepentantly watching the body drop with a thud on the small puddle of blood beneath his feet. "Then," he says, uncertain but determined all the same, "do you want to come home with me?"

 

Kensuke looks at him with fear in his eyes.

 

And, Tsuna thinks as the boy tentatively and cautiously reaches for the bloodied sleeve of his left arm, with  _hope_.

 

"...Okay."

 

 

*

 

 

"His name is Kensuke," Tsu-kun tells her when he gets home with blood on his clothes and a grin on his face. There is no meat clinging to him, but he reeks of smoke and ash. Of burned flesh and concrete. Faint amber traces his brown eye while the other stays bright red.

 

Kensuke looks between them, worried and scared.

 

Not of what they are, she notes, but of  _rejection_.

 

Tsu-kun has always had an uncanny ability of somehow knowing, Nana inwardly admits, the predator in her shifting uneasily at the - visibly - easy compliance of the human child around her son. Tsu-kun always knew where to look, what corners to take and how far to go in search of food, who to watch when they are outside, knew what to tolerate and what he shouldn't endure in the hands of other children his age.

 

"Can we keep him, Mama?" Tsu-kun asks, every bit like the child he seems to be, wide-eyed and manic in the same way he had been when he brought the little bird home. It's not desperation that she sees in his expression but unquestionable certainty that Nana will play by his rules, whether she wanted to or not.

 

(To an extent, Nana  _fears_  it.)

 

"Now, Tsu-kun," she says, plays her role well and smiles despite the searing heat of her son's narrowed eyes, "Don't you think we should ask Kensuke-kun first?"

 

Kensuke flinches, shooting an uncertain look towards Tsu-kun who tilts his head in question. Neither pushing or rushing.

 

"J-just… just like that?" the human child whispers, confused. "You're just… going to…"

 

"Hm?" Tsu-kun blinks at him.  _Deliberate obliviousness,_  Nana realizes.

 

"I- I was mean to you. I pushed you down. I bullied you. I  _hurt_  you and you just... You'll… you'll give me a home? J-just like that...?"

 

"You already apologized. It's okay," Tsu-kun says with conviction in his voice. "You don't have to be scared anymore. I'll protect you."

 

Kensuke has yet to understand but Nana knows that he believes him. He must have seen firsthand what Tsu-kun is willing to do for what is  _his_.

 

At that, the boy suddenly turns to her with straightened shoulders as if he's come to some sort of conclusion, drawing himself up to his full height and looking her in the eyes, undeterred and unflinching even when black and red stares back at him. Nana takes a moment to admire his courage; perhaps this is what Tsu-kun sees in him. The resolve to overcome.

 

"I'm sorry, Sawada-san," he says steadily. "I'm sorry for hurting Tsunayoshi. I'm sorry for being mean to him."

 

"Kensuke-" Tsu-kun tries to say, the mildly chastising and exasperated tone of his voice and the press of his palm against Kensuke's back like the flick of an orchestrator's wrist in the conduction of a cacophony of chaos, the stalk of a predator circling its defenseless, weakened,  _vulnerable_  prey.

 

"I-If… if it's okay," the human child suddenly deflates, his shoulders tense in a way that tells her he's bracing to be hit and screamed at, "Can I… stay?"

 

Nana slowly kneels in front of him. Tsu-kun watches her with sharp eyes.

 

This boy is  _his_ , the look in them rages, screams.  _Know your place._

 

"Kensuke-kun," she says softly so as not to startle him, careful not to touch and not to draw too near. "Do you want to? Despite knowing what we are?"

 

He inhales sharply. She could tell he isn't used to being given options or comfortable with the idea of making a choice for himself. Tsu-kun knows this. Made use of it.

 

"I…" He shuts his eyes, fingers clenched tightly by his sides. "I want to. I want to stay. I want to make it up to Tsunayoshi. I want to protect him, too, even if..."

 

Tsu-kun's eyes are piercing and  _violent_ in his decision to remain silent, the heat around him seeming to intensify until even she had to take a few steps back to breathe.  _His,_ every fibre of his being says.  _He is mine to keep. I will devour anyone who tries to hurt him._

 

"Kensuke-kun. Look at me."

 

He tentatively lifts his head and opens his eyes, his entire body trembling.

 

"It's okay. Trust me, it's okay. I won't hurt you."

 

Kensuke looks at her with teary eyes.

 

"Of course you can stay," she says, smiling warmly, and those words are all it takes for Kensuke to break. Tears slip down his cheeks as he cries into her opened arms, tears that have never been shed and screams that have never been heard, heartache and hurt that has been forgotten with the death of his mother and buried under the bloodied knuckles of his father.

 

Tsu-kun smiles at it all, like he hadn't planned this from the beginning.

 

 

*

 

 

Kensuke knows his place.

 

He knows that Tsunayoshi will protect him if someone tries to hurt him. He knows that Nana will do the same, because he is family.

 

But above all, Kensuke  _knows_ his place, knows that when Tsunayoshi turns quiet and subdued, when Nana goes eerily still, he has to go back inside his room and lock himself in until he can no longer hear the slow drag of something heavy against creaking floors and the crunching of bones and the ripping of skin. He knows not to talk about it during dinner when Nana sets his breakfast on the table, knows not to ask Tsunayoshi questions about the noises on the way to school, knows  _never_ to open his mouth and tell anyone else.

 

He may be family, but he is no different from the corpses in the body bags Tsunayoshi drags home.

 

Which is precisely why he digs for the cutter he has in his school bag, slaps a hand over the boy's mouth, and  _slashes_ with not a hint of remorse when he notices him following Tsunayoshi in an alleyway and sees the reflexive recoil that jolts through his body the moment Tsunayoshi rips into the back of a rotting cat with his teeth.

 

He remembers feeling ill, remembers the unpleasant lurch of his stomach at the smooth gaping cut on the boy's neck, remembers the strangled gurgle that he made against the palm of his hand as the boy's eyes rolled to the back of his head and fell on the floor.

 

He remembers wiping the blood off of his face. He remembers Tsunayoshi watching it all with a faint smile, red and gold eyes lidded as Kensuke brought the boy to his feet.

 

Tsunayoshi might be impulsive but he isn't reckless- he would have sensed if he was being followed, would have put a stop to it before it could happen. He wouldn't be so careless as to blatantly feed in broad daylight.

 

This, Kensuke thought then in a momentary bout of clarity, was a lesson.

 

Tsunayoshi  _let_  it happen. He knew he was being followed, he knew that Kensuke will be there right behind him, he knew the risks, and  _he_   _let it all happen_  to remind him _._

 

(Tsunayoshi and Nana are kind and forgiving, compassionate in ways that even some humans can't be, but Kensuke has never once forgotten that they are murderers.

 

Underneath warm skin and bright smiles are fanged teeth and sharp claws.

 

And underneath  _family_  was-)

 

"Did you know Kensuke?" Tsunayoshi stood from where he is crouched behind a dumpster to approach the boy. He was around their age, if not a few years older. Kensuke has seen him in school and something in him twists at the thought.

 

"This boy," he held the boy's chin between dripping fingers, tilted it back to peer at the cut with a secretive smile, "tried to kill his three-month-old sister. His mother thinks it's an accident."

 

Kensuke didn't know, but he isn't surprised.

 

"Why did you make me do it?" he asked. A part of him is terrified - has always been ever since he saw Tsunayoshi's slender arm pierce through his father's chest and out his back - and unsettled that Tsunayoshi had little hesitation about putting Kensuke in such a place but at this point, a bigger part of him is curious.

 

Tsunayoshi regarded him with a blank look. Then, "Would you be able to do it again?"

 

Kensuke flinched.

 

"We aren't normal people, Kensuke. You've seen what we can do." He dug his fingers into the cut on the boy's throat, pried it open with ease, and licked at his fingers. "We're dangerous."

 

He wasn't referring to Kensuke.  _We are dangerous,_ he said, not to Kensuke, never to him, never to family, but they are dangerous to those around them and Kensuke is just human.

 

Tsunayoshi was asking to know if he'll be able to take another life for his own sake.

 

Staring at the blood sliding down the edge of his cutter, he looked up at the brunet, at his brother, and sliced through the meat of his palm. Black engulfed the whites of Tsunayoshi's eyes in a split second, red lines throbbing high above his cheeks.

 

"I'm prepared, Tsunayoshi," he said as he knelt to offer Tsunayoshi his hand, "I'm prepared to kill if I have to. I'm your brother, after all."

 

Tsunayoshi's lips curved into a dark smile, tongue lapping at the blood with a feral glint in his eyes.

 

Kensuke didn't have to be reminded.

 

He knows his place.

 

 

* 

 

 

There are no coincidences, Tsuna learns this when he's seven-years-old, the very day his father brought home a man that pulsed with a familiar heat that his mother - their  _kind_  - didn't have. He had touched, had intruded, had let loose a seal that would freeze even the bluest of fires but Tsuna is different, he is a carnivore from a carnivorous mother, a cannibalistic, flesh-eating monster, a ghoul, and the son and descendant of  _flames,_  and that man cannot take away what has been given to him by the legacy that sings in his father's veins.

 

He had taken one look at his mother, at the sickly complexion of her skin and the  _anger_ in her deceptively calm smile as that man pulled him aside to press a blistered finger to his forehead where the shadow of fire danced on his being to seal, to conceal, to  _protect_ , and it's nothing but  _sickening_. He felt his blood rage in indignance, felt his eyes burn the way they would when there is blood on his tongue, and it takes everything out of him to hide what he is, everything that he truly is. Never to that man, he resolved himself to think, never to him or his father, because they are corrupt with power and ambition, they are dripping red from blood that is not of a prey's but of sinless beings that had done nothing wrong, and they are a part of it, of the pile of would-be corpses that their polished shoes will soon step on.

 

They are more of a monster than Tsuna can ever be, and judging by the irritated welts on his mother's ring finger, he isn't the only one who thinks it.

 

Kensuke grips his hand and scowls when they leave not even two days after the sealing, the expression the darkest he's made ever since the day he killed a child.

 

"I don't like them," he says, plain and simple, but there is more to it, there is always more to it, because there is a defeated slump to his shoulders. "I don't like them, but they'll be back for you, won't they?"

 

Tsuna fights not to grip Kensuke's own in fear of crushing his fingers and making him scream.

 

He knows they will, the voice in his head tells him every night, and when the time comes-

 

When the time comes, Tsuna will  _burn them all alive._

 

 

_*_

 

 

After that, everything is quiet.

 

It's the kind of quiet that grated at Tsuna's skin, the kind that felt a little like knives cutting through every inch of his flesh, the kind that left him blindly grasping at air with his hands, the taste on his tongue bland and the smell nearly pungent with  _nothing_. There's a muteness to his senses, dampened by a heavy and unrelenting cold weight that seemed to press down on the nape of his neck, not unlike his father's own when he used to lift him above the ground, and Tsuna  _despised_  the sensation with every fiber of his being.

 

(The unignorable presence of sheer absence was one thing. Having it constantly intruding, interfering, and  _dictating_ his thoughts was another.)

 

Nana is silent about it. Kensuke, even more so, after Tsuna nearly tears into his throat five days after his father's visit with  _that man_. They don't speak of it, but every millisecond of delay in Tsuna's response, every awkward beat of inaction where his eyes would seem to  _burn out,_ and every abrupt display of unexpected aggression was indication enough that something has changed.

 

Being able to control the physical - and reflexive - manifestation of the ghoul in his blood was easier when he hasn't had anything interfere and mess with his system. That's a tad bit harder when his body responds to a stimulation that  _he couldn't even sense_. He's fortunate that Kensuke is quick to alert him whenever he starts seeing the barest hint of black creeping into the corners of Tsuna's eyes when they're outside but it's not as if they share the same class - with Kensuke being a grade higher than him - and having to periodically excuse himself from class to check if he's manifesting is bound to get him some questions if done often enough.

 

Evidently, Tsuna should have figured that Nana wouldn't remain quiet about it forever.

 

Especially not when it becomes less of a mild inconvenience and more of a perilous risk that could lead to the possible revelation and extinction of their kind.

 

 

_*_

 

 

"You're being reckless," Nana says, blunt and unflinching, her fingers delicately linked under her chin and her eyes smoldering. Kensuke is seated beside her, the stark white of the bandages wrapped around his neck and arms standing out under the warm light.

 

Tsuna taps his finger on the table once and doesn't say anything.

 

A month ago, he would've been able to feel the texture under his fingertip and hear the echo resonate under his skin. Now, there's nothing but a dull, nearly silent tap that leaves him feeling incensed.

 

There is absolutely  _nothing_ , Tsuna thinks, and he wouldn't have thought he'd be this unsettled over losing something he didn't know he had in the first place, but he is, and it's infuriating,  _it's disgusting, he can't get the feeling out of the pores of his skin-_

 

"I didn't think I'd have to repeat myself when I told you to be careful," she continues frostily, pointedly staring at the blood under his fingernails and the crimson that tinted his chapped lips, and Tsuna doesn't even  _notice_ , doesn't show any signs of recognition which is in and of itself alarming, "I thought  _you_ , of all people, would understand that best."

 

He taps again and again. A gradual crescendo, foreboding.

 

_Shut up, shut up, shut up,_  he repeats, the voice indistinguishable from his and his mother's, the tug in his stomach telling of another bout of uncontrolled urge to eat and it's so  _familiar_  to him now after suffering through it the first few weeks with forced restraint,  _there's nothing, you don't understand, I can't see, I can't feel anything, I can't breathe without feeling like I'm swallowing dirt, shut_ up _-_

 

Kensuke shifts uneasily in his chair.

 

"The authorities have started noticing; you haven't been careful with hiding the evidence. They know where you took them and they have their suspicions about what could have happened and that's- that's  _dangerous_ , Tsu-kun. They could trace you back here and you wouldn't know, you hardly even noticed that you came home with blood on your-"

 

Tsuna clenches and unclenches his fingers. They're trembling, he notices, and he feels hot, feels like he's burning inside and out, every breath in and out an inferno in his lungs. Something- felt wrong, but he couldn't tell  _what_ -

 

"-clothes and your… Tsu-kun, are you listening?"

 

It feels different, numb and nothing else aside from the acidic gnawing of something in his stomach-

 

"Tsu-kun."

 

-for something cold, something warm, something sweet, something,  _something_  and he's forgotten what it tastes like but he has to remember, he could remember, if he only had another, another prey, another try, another bite, but  _that man_  is there, that man is in his head, that man-

 

_"Tsunayoshi-"_

 

-brown eyes, smiling and warm but unkind, the presence of eight others, eight flames, eight eyes, eight voices, and  _sin_ , the dissonance of sin and Family,  _Vongola_ , it sings, and he is the tenth, he is the torchbearer, he is the descendant of the Sky, and he-

 

"Shut up," he murmurs.

 

Nana stops smiling. The light over their heads flickers ominously.

 

"...What did you say?"

 

He looks up, meets her eyes, and sees  _that man_  smiling back at him.

 

"I said,  _shut up_."

 

"Mind your tone, Tsunayoshi," she returns mildly as the table creaks dangerously under her elbows, the whites of her eyes slipping into coal black.

 

Tsuna lifts his chin, a predator to another, and murmurs, "Or what?"

 

Something moves and rips behind Nana, knocking over glasses and porcelain plates with one sweep. Tsuna leans forward and tries to do the same but everything in him seems to stutter and freeze, the cold mist of opaque ice clinging heavily to his skin.

 

The table breaks, the light shatters, and Kensuke feels something warm splatter against the side and front of his face.

 

A few seconds, seven heartbeats.

 

When Kensuke's eyes adjust to the darkness, he sees Tsuna dangling from the ceiling with a gargantuan black tail ripping through his stomach.

 

Nana looks up at him, her expression devoid of any emotion. The front of her face is dripping with red and at that very moment, Kensuke sees the Tsunayoshi he knew in their mother.

 

"Don't make me repeat myself," she says, her tone cold. She doesn't raise her voice, doesn't move as much as a millimeter from where she stands, but something about the way she speaks provokes fear in Kensuke in a way that Tsunayoshi never could. "I am still your mother and it isn't beneath me to  _eat_  you."

 

*

 

It takes a while before Tsuna recovers.

 

For several days, he lies in bed, his greying pallor rivaling those of the rotting corpses he feeds on. He is unnaturally still, the wound in his stomach not at all healing like he initially thought it would, and Kensuke worries but Nana smiles an unreadable smile, says that  _it was just a matter of time._

 

The thing is Kensuke thinks he understands. Tsunayoshi hadn't been himself since his father's unexpected visit and he knows it had something to do with the old man who came with him and the restrained heat that seemed to boil under his skin. Kensuke knew, to an extent, that whatever that man had done to Tsunayoshi led to the heated confrontation between him and his mother, and that Nana had  _known_ , too, because otherwise, she wouldn't have pushed him that far, wouldn't have threatened, much less driven a hole straight through his stomach.

 

So Kensuke patiently waited. Anxiously, with bated breath. There isn't much he can do.

 

When Tsuna awakens two weeks later, his eyes are both gold and the hole in his stomach had closed, leaving behind faint lines that resembled blooming thunder.

 

Something has changed.

 

"I saw a man who looked like me," he overhears him say to Nana that night and it's the Tsunayoshi that he knows, not the stranger with golden eyes and pure orange flames he'd seen hours earlier, "He said his name was Ieyasu."

 

Nana had laughed but that, too, was different. It sounded hollow.

 

"Was  _that man_ there?" she asks.

 

A pause. "Yes," Tsunayoshi says after a long moment of silence, "he was."

 

Something has changed, and Kensuke doesn't know what.

 


End file.
